Understanding Comics & Critique Semiotics

TERMS:


Semiotics:

Semiotics is the study of signs, symbols, and how they are communicated. It's how contexts based on a cultural or local level can change how everything could be interpreted.

According to Charles Pierce, three terms key to understanding semiotics include: the object (the visual sign/symbol), the representamen (what it's trying to communicate), and the interpretant (the cultural convention around the sign).


Denotation:

Denotation is the literal interpretation of a written text or a given image.


Connotation:

Connotation is what's indirectly suggested by an image or text, the context in which it's found, its form, or the style. It's the idea that an image invokes. 


Icon:

An icon is any image that's used to represent a person, place, thing, or idea. This term branches off into many subcategories, some representational of fixed concepts and philosophies (symbols, letters, numbers), and others representational of something tangible (pictorial).


Tone:

The feeling, emotion, or atmosphere that a text/image carries with it.


Metaphor:

An indirect, not literal representation of a concept, idea, thing, etc...

Comments